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Custom Old Mac Pro Build vs New 2013+ Mac Pro

Ryan Sheets

Ryan Sheets

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Curious on viewing and editing in real time 4k to 6k footage.

Would you purchase or build a older mac pro with higher ram and 1 or 2 GTX Titan graphics cards vs a newer 6 or 8 core mac pro with dual D700 graphics cards?

Does anyone have links with recommendations from places to buy/specs they would want?

Thanks!

Ryan
 
Thinking the same. Got a few Mac Pros to get rid of or upgrade. The options I consider is replacing them with 5k Imacs, 8core trashcans or upgrade them, but I dont know enough how, what, where to buy to get the old machines kicking. I also will not consider upgrading if I cant get thunderbolt on them.
 
No possibility of Thunderbolt on old Mac Pros. If that is a necessity, I think your options lead straight to New Mac Pro, MBP, iMac, hackintosh, or PC.

If that's not an issue, then you can get a 5,1 machine and go to town on maxing out GPU, RAM, SSD drives, etc. I think for a lot of people, those old Mac Pros are still viable production machines. For those who need absolute power, there are better options, including moving away from Mac altogether.
 
An older Mac Pro isn't going to use the full speed of a Titan, your better off with a GTX 980 Ti or less.

I have a fully pumped up Mac Pro Legacy system. It's never reliable at full rez but 1/2 works most of the time. I got everything, RRX, best graphics, tons of memory, 1200 MB/s RAID.

Ryan Sheets said:
Curious on viewing and editing in real time 4k to 6k footage.

Would you purchase or build a older mac pro with higher ram and 1 or 2 GTX Titan graphics cards vs a newer 6 or 8 core mac pro with dual D700 graphics cards?

Does anyone have links with recommendations from places to buy/specs they would want?

Thanks!

Ryan
Click to expand...
 
Before I invest in non upgradable, underpowered, limited expendability, rats nest and very expensive trashcan computer, I'd take a full advantage of inexpensive and still very capable dual CPU 5.1 Mac. It's pretty sad, when a relatively ancient computer still can outperform a brand new, supposedly top of the line one.
 
jake blackstone said:
Before I invest in non upgradable, underpowered, limited expendability, rats nest and very expensive trashcan computer, I'd take a full advantage of inexpensive and still very capable dual CPU 5.1 Mac. It's pretty sad, when a relatively ancient computer still can outperform a brand new, supposedly top of the line one.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly.

I recently left the mac platform for my main workstations and invested in a HP Z840 with M6000 and FC plus dot hill raid. I run ADSK Flame on Linux on this machine. This said the old 5.1 MacPro with a GF 680 card is still a good and reliable workstation. I will keep it for a while and perhaps invest into a GF 980 card.

The new iMac seems to be a viable way for an assisting workstation. But as long as the old MacPro ist alive and still kicking I'll keep it.

Hans
 
Question for you guys. Would using a new 5k iMac with an external GPU make sense? If so, what would you get for the GPU and external unit? Appreciate the thoughts, etc!
 
Ryan Sheets said:
Question for you guys. Would using a new 5k iMac with an external GPU make sense? If so, what would you get for the GPU and external unit? Appreciate the thoughts, etc!
Click to expand...

This is what I´m thinking as well, the Imac 5k is pretty much unbeatable, or not many other swing 5k screen and for us running Flames OSX is a must. So can I add a Thunderbolt Dual slot PCI expansion box and put two titans in it (or what would be best solution)? Are people doing this?

I got a 8core trashcan with maxed out ram and a 8bay pegasus. That runs nicely for what I do but for the same price I get 3 or four imacs 5k and what I think I'm lacking is GPU power and I really would like to have that 5k screens. I got 4 more Mac pro's that needs to be updated and I really don't know what do instead, the 5k imac solution seams really tempting in price and the 10bit suport in Davinci and Flame is making that option even more valid.
 
I just upgraded my 5,1 MPtower (12 core) with an non- flashed GTX980, and it will play back 4k from my black magic cinema camera just fine, put a lumetri color effect on it and it played fine, but engage the vignette in the lumetri color and it started to stutter. I was also able to test a 6 core trashcan with the D700 cards, and it was able to play the same sequence with the color and vignette effect smooth at full res. I put a simple grain noise filter on it and it started to stutter. So the trash can had one more effect layer ability. Now, I have no idea if the effects were GPU accelerated or processor only.

5K footage from my EPIC (non dragon), my tower will play pack at 1/2 res no problem, the trashcan played back full res. 8:1 compression.

Cinema 4D was about the same, used a simple metric cloner object at 20x20x20, and the viewports both had the same response when moving around, the trashcan was maybe a touch faster. The trashcan did do a lot better in the OpenCL cinebench test though.

Overall, while highly subjective and wholly unscientific, the $6k for the trashcan I tested didn't blow my skirt up enough to want me to get rid of my tower. I'm probably going to invest in another GPU, as the GTX980 was only $500, I could easily get another with a power supply and run the hell out of Octane in C4D. Also, the GTX980 will run both OpenCL and CUDA, so that in and of itself makes me not want those supposedly awesome D700 cards.

The 5K iMacs do seem killer in this range, for the price, screen, lots of TB ports, looks to be a fantastic tool. For the price, it would be hard to pass them up especially if you are looking at multiple units.

I'll have to check but I also think i am not getting the most from my 980 since its not flashed, someone told me that I have to get it flashed to enable the PCI2 abilities, right now its just running PCIE1. I'll have to check into that.
 
Ryan Sheets said:
Question for you guys. Would using a new 5k iMac with an external GPU make sense? If so, what would you get for the GPU and external unit? Appreciate the thoughts, etc!
Click to expand...


Is this even a thing?

I thought OSX cant use external GPUs.
 
Andree, does your post refer to the ability of OSX using external GPU power?
if yes, do you care to share?

best wishes and kind regards,
martin

(p.s. because i was told you can only run bootcamp on a macbook and then windows os can use an external GPU for gaming purposes)
 
I know Blair pooh poohs it all the time, but my awful trashcan as some people put it works pretty well. I have the 12 core. I have the D700 cards. I have 32 gigs of RAM. In REDCINE-X Pro, Dragon 6k plays in full res just fine. Seriously. No problems and no delay. I should mention that I am doing this via Thunderbolt 1 with the files stored on a Promise Pegasus R6 set to RAID 5.
 
I'm not actually anti-trashcan, I just don't think it has enough bang for the buck. The 12 core/dual D700s version w/32GB is $8,000.

As soon as they offer one with PCIe3, DDR4, USB-TypeC and HDMI2 I'll probably buy it, until then...

Cheers - #19
 
That's right. That's what it cost. And you know what? It blazes though renders in C4D. And as I said, I don't even see a hiccup in RCX. It was expensive. But it works. I should also say I made my investment back on it and more in the first month that I had it.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
External GPU compute power can be accessed, though the bomber cards (Titans, etc) may be bottlenecked by the I/O.
Click to expand...

Right. Don't Titan level GFX cards...need 8 lanes? But Thunderbolt 2 is only equivalent to 4 lanes (which is why RR-X cards can only do HALF debayer via Thunderbolt?). Ie there's a 50% performance loss (currently).

I believe this is what i've heard.

And it's why THUNDERBOLT 3 (eta 2016) should be quite a big deal - as apparently it's designed to handle at least 8 lanes (meaning RR-X would do FULL debayer, and Titan's would be 100% utilized). Should be especially important for the new Trashcans (also ETA 2016?).
 
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